PK Agarwal holds one of the more unusual posts in academia — he is regional dean and CEO of Northeastern University Silicon Valley.

“Northeastern has a disruptive view of the future,” said Agarwal, explaining why he is running a campus all the way across the continent from the university’s home base in Boston. The university will continue to be place-based, but its places will be global.

The university has conducted several surveys of corporation in the Bay Area asking companies what they need, and more employees with computer science degrees topped their wish list. Last November, 14,900 job openings were advertised for someone with a masters in computer science; the universities in the Bay area graduate just 500 a year, Agarwal said.

“We plan to deal with this question by offering a handful of degrees from the college of computer science and the college of professional studies."

Higher ed is being disrupted, he added, and Northeastern intends to be at the leading edge of adapting to the needs of corporations and students. It wants to help students with immediate training in specific areas, but then allow them the flexibility to stack their learning into a degree at the end.

“Workload demands, especially in the tech sector, are incredible. Thirty percent of our target audience say their schedules are unpredictable. They want to be online, but many also want to build a network and interact with professors.” Hardly any want an entirely classroom based education.